"I see," Blaisse said, and yawned. "That's very interesting." But he asked no more questions; he reached for his silver-laced drink, swirling the liquid before putting it to his lips. Half the people in the room had gone to sleep over the last course. Their clothes disarrayed, they nestled in the cushions, while the rest pleasured themselves with their attendants. Subtwo felt pressed down and smothered by the glutted snoring bodies and the pumping flesh. He wanted to leave, but he did not know the protocol; he wished he could overcome his early training all at once and become rude and thoughtless and sloppy, stand, shout imprecations, overturn the table, and stalk away. But he sat for another hour, stiffly, disapproving, while the activity ranged around him. It could not be called an orgy; it was closer to mass communal masturbation. None of the free people caressed or even touched each other. They lay supine and allowed their slaves to work over them until involuntary reactions set them into motion. It was as though they considered each instant's personal pleasure so important that they would not give up any of it, not to give pleasure to another human being, not to communicate, not to love. They seemed to feel the rewards would not be worth the cost. They threw away what Subtwo sought, and he despised them for it.
In the whole huge room of jeweled and perfumed people, only Subtwo was alone, and only Clarissa and Subone were together. Subtwo could hear their voices; he could not avert his ears as he averted his eyes from the Lady's bare white skin and his pseudosib's darker nude body. He could hear their commands to each other, and he reflected both that Subone had learned a great deal since their release and escape from their solitary, sexless beginnings, and that Subone and Clarissa were really no different from anyone else in the room.
He waited until almost everyone had fallen into exhausted sleep, and even the slaves dozed, awakening and glancing covertly at him every so often to see if he had left them without observers. He started to rise.
"Is there nothing you wish?"
Startled, he glanced down. Blaisse's alien slave peeked past her lord's body. She cringed at the sharpness of Subtwo's look. Almost naked now, she wore only the jewels on her eyelids and the armbands of silver and sapphire. Subtwo realized quite abruptly that she was very young.
"How old are you?" he asked gently. He remembered her name: Saita. He was almost surprised that she was not called by some animal's diminutive, like a pet, for Blaisse had not treated her as an intelligent being, but used her as an animal.
"I don't know, Lord."
"How long have you been here?"
"The Lady Clarissa has said three years, Lord."
He saw that she had never been taught anything but how to induce erotic pleasure. Wasted potential always enraged him. There was intelligence in her face; she was not stupid, only naive and ignorant, ignorant of the meaning of her status and surroundings, somehow untouched by them.
"No," he said. "No, there's nothing I want that you can give me."
He made his way past sleeping and unconscious bodies, stepping over and around them with revulsion. At the other end of the table Subone stretched on his cushions. The Lady Clarissa lay with her head pillowed on his belly and her sparkling eyes closed.
"You don't know how to enjoy yourself," Subone said.
Subtwo hesitated, looking down at them. Subone's muscles seemed slack, his expression greedy and foolish. Abruptly, Subtwo departed, making no response.
Chapter 7
Mischa climbed through the narrow hidden fissure that connected her cave to the larger cavern behind it. The jewels were locked away, she was well rested, she had eaten. Tossing her clothes onto the sand, she plunged into the still, dark pool and came up sputtering from the cold. The second chamber was so cool that the floor and the shadows were black, while the ceiling, warmed slightly by air currents from Center, glowed deep maroon. Mischa found this rare near-darkness restful. She floated on her back for a few minutes, until, growing chilly, she paddled closer to the edge of the pool and stood up. The bank was of fine-grained black sand, carried in from the desert outside, bit by bit, over many years. Mischa scooped up handfuls of the sand and scrubbed her body, vigorously until she was warm again, slowly until she felt clean.
It was evening when she went out again into Center. She wandered along the Circle, covertly studying the new offworld people. They did not wear uniforms, but they were readily distinguishable. They were taller and darker than Center people, most of whom had never in their lives been exposed to sunlight. All offworlders gave an impression of bigness and of solidity, but these also spoke and laughed loudly and frequently. The looming stone sky had subdued other offworlders. Mischa could understand this group's lack of fear: they had come in through the storm. They must feel special, chosen, knowing they were the only ones ever to live through that trial.
Mischa climbed the side of First Hill, and watched the activity below and around Stone Palace. When the lights dimmed, the new doorway remained open. This Mischa did not understand: fearlessness or even contempt seemed an insufficient reason for the new people to leave themselves so vulnerable. Her suspicion was aroused.
She waited until the traffic into the new entrance ceased, until it seemed that those who were returning to bed had done so, and those staying out had settled into their pleasures. Then she climbed down to the Circle and crossed the trampled, littered black sand. The beggars watched her, and she thought she heard them whisper and titter when she stopped in front of Stone Palace.
Slowly, they grew silent. When Mischa stepped over the threshold, no one outside or in spoke to her.
The tapestries and the velvet had disappeared. The corridor was lined with flat panels of light brown plastic that reflected no echoes. The lines were clean and sharp and the corners right-angled. The air smelled curiously flat; the tang of stone was gone. The carpeting had been replaced with a cushiony tile.
The hallway projected a long way back, without branches or adjoining rooms. Mischa felt uneasy in a space so regular and devoid of hiding places. She reached a foyer in which, if a fountain of water had existed, it had been replaced by one of light. Self-luminous panels regularized the chamber's shape into a polygon with alternate empty faces of hall entrances. The tapestries began again in all the halls but the middle one. Mischa moved toward it. The faint air currents of her passing disturbed the fountain. Its fibers shivered, and their hue changed slowly from red to soft blue.
The aberrant hallway was square and straight, and built to appear longer than it really was. The ceiling crept down, the walls in, the floors up. The perspective was exaggerated, yet the huge double doors Mischa approached were almost three times her height.
And still she saw no guards. She touched the left-hand door, and it swung silently, easily ajar. By every criterion of suspicion Mischa had ever used, she should turn and flee this place. She moved one step closer, so she could see inside the room beyond the doorway, and she expected an outcry, an alarm, the touch of a captor's hand. She could feel the scars on her back; she could always feel them on some level of awareness, and she knew she always would.
She hesitated with her hand on the door. If she went away now, she would be safe for a little while, but the inevitable results would be the same as if the pseudosibs drove her away. Her sister's insanity would affect her until she was as helpless and pliable as the little girl. As well be dead, and Chris would die, for nothing in Center could ever help him.